Kanvasroom LLC Jacob Hammontree [email protected] Science, Discovery and the Universe Computer Science

Overview For my project, I worked with Kanvasroom LLC, a small startup founded by two fellow Terps and College Park Scholars. The company is based around a web platform that allows creative people to collaborate on projects with people all over the world. My main role in the company was developing front-end and back-end code for the website. I used HTML and CSS to develop the aesthetics of the front end, and primarily PHP for the backend scripting. There were three main components to working in a small startup doing development, and I will go into detail about each of these below. Frontend and backend development are both essential for a fully functioning website. The frontend is what the user sees: the style of the page, the notifications, their profile picture, etc. The backend of the website is what makes the website work like a tool. For example, a backend service might allow for messaging on the site. The frontend of the messaging is represented as a graphical inbox with messages, and the backend is the database queries and scripting (programming) that goes into making the messaging functional. The model Source: http://www.tonymarston.net/php-mysql/front-end-back-end-01.png for this is shown to the left.

Development Teamwork Communication

During my time at Kanvasroom, I have Developing a large-scale website My co-developer lived in Mexico, so had a lead development role where I involves working in teams. In communication was a huge have both developed and partnership with the other challenge to overcome. We met managed project branches. In addition developer, we would commonly outside of our weekly company to frontend development in HTML and build certain webpages together. meetings once per week in a CSS, I have also written much of the Because, of this, the code I wrote development meeting in which we backend using PHP. Large websites had to be well documented and discussed our agenda for often require use of a database system, properly typed for maximum accomplishing our monthly and I have also had a large part in readability. This will also be useful benchmarks. We conferenced via developing the SQL database for the as the company scales and code Skype, and had a WhatsApp group website, designing it for optimal data will be more and more difficult to for small updates such as retrieval. maintain. establishing meeting times. Reflection and Acknowledgments Overall, my experience working at Kanvasroom LLC has been a great learning experience for technical and professional purposes. Unfortunately, I will be leaving the company at the beginning of June so that I may work over the Summer. This experience has taught me a lot, and has opened my eyes to the many subfields of computer science. I look forward to future career exploration in the future. I would like to the thank the Kanvasroom team, Aaron Pludwinski, Derien Scott, and Dan Becker, for allowing me this opportunity. I would also like to thank Dr. Alan Peel for his considerations and patience. I wouldn’t have learned as much without your help.